Thursday, 9 October 2014

A couple of years ago I started speaking to military leavers about how to prepare for the transition to civilian life. Most often this has been through Heropreneurs events and visits to serving military units, and addressed to servicemen and women who want to start their own businesses.

But one piece of advice applies whether you want to set up your own business or not - and whether you're serving or ex-military or a lifelong civilian: the value of networking.

Back to Kevin Bacon

In 1994 Kevin Bacon famously claimed to have worked with everyone in Holywood, but since then the world has become much more connected. In summer 2012 I went to Linkedin to find that I was 3 removes from Kevin Bacon - 7 people I knew knew someone who knew one of the 142 people he listed as connections. 6 months later I knew 11 people who knew one or more of his 204 connections.

Now in October 2014, Kevin Bacon's status as an icon of networking has been raised by his advertisements for EE, the mobile network. Meanwhile he now has 234 connections - and my third degree connections have jumped to 42.

Bringing Home the Bacon

You may not be looking for a role in Kevin Bacon's next film, but whether you're leaving the armed forces or developing your career options, remember that networking brings you inevitably closer to opportunities. So it's essential to keep building relationships with people you like, admire and can learn from.

Networking is about meeting people and pursuing connections and interesting leads. My advice to everyone whether ex-military or not, is to set up a LinkedIn profile and start to build their community of shared interest. Especially for those leaving the armed forces, this is a very quick way to secure introductions among people who will understand your background, your values and your ability.

And in case of doubt, I'm not stalking Kevin Bacon, or earning commission from LinkedIn!

Tuesday, 24 June 2014

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done
But he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one
Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it!

Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it;”
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat
And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure,
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing
That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.

Wednesday, 4 September 2013

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an exceptional writer - though not entirely in a good way. He is variously described as a "superhero of the mind" (Boyd Tonkin) and "Wall Street's principal dissident" (Malcolm Gladwell), and much commentary focuses on his style more than his content. Few dispute that he is brilliant, though he feels compelled to demonstrate this with striking frequency.

His most recent book Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder
is an exciting challenge to received wisdom about adopting middle-of-the-road strategies in personal health and finance, macroeconomics and much more besides. But it comes with a strong dose of personal advertisement and gratuitous demonstration of Taleb's breadth of learning.

It is worth putting up with this though. The essence of his argument is that a spectrum runs from fragility through robustness to antifragility, and that we should seek to develop antifragility - the ability to become stronger through challenges - in our bodies, our finances, our politics and our economies.

With examples from a wide variety of disciplines Taleb illustrates that we often describe certain things as good or bad when in fact the key consideration is dose. By careful dose control we can increase our tolerances of many things that would otherwise be very harmful to us - and in doing so we increase our antifragility. Taleb himself reacts to this insight by training with streetfighters rather than personal trainers and investing in a contrarian portfolio.

His arguments have fascinating ramifications for individuals and policy makers. For example, he suggests that our public health systems are riven by agency risks and the malign influence of what he calls "iatrogenics". He praises entrepreneurs as the heroes of humanity - the people who knowingly or unknowingly take risks that probably condemn them to losses but drive forward progress for the societies to which they belong.

One of Taleb's interesting conclusions is that we are terrible at making complex judgements and that we should therefore trust the only reliable assessor of quality - time. In other words, we should suspend judgement on things (foods, medicines, concepts, philosophies) until they have stood the test of time. He points out that the best predictor of how long something will last is how long it has already lasted. As a result, he advocates drinking wine and coffee but avoids all processed foods.

This is an exciting and bold book and it may change your behaviour in any of several ways. You may consider changing your diet, your attitude to saving and investment and even your career. It is well worth reading.

The book touches on the network significance of religions in which adherents have a direct relationship with God. They explain how this increases the interconnectedness of faith networks since all believers are only one remove from each other through their direct connection with God. Through outbreaks of contagious laughter and disease to discussion of the wealth of nations, this book has plenty to stimulate the thoughts of policy-makers and casual readers alike.

I found "Connected" encouraged me to have greater sympathy for individuals as the product - to a greater extent than I had imagined - of the networks in which they develop.

Thinking, Fast and Slow
by Daniel Kahneman is a must read book. Kahneman synthesises the lessons of his 60 year nobel prize-winning career into this tome. As one of the fathers of Behavioural Economics he has been at the forefront of exposing the inherent illogicality of the human mind - features such as loss aversion (the endowment effect) and our tendency to see coherence and causation where there is none.

Kahneman fills this book with quick exercises that illustrate our habitual jumping to flawed conclusions - the "fast" thinking of the title. He explains that this is a fundamental and sometimes useful characteristic of our brains and suggests ways to mitigate the consequences and harness the "slow" thinking which buys us time to correct our instinctive mistakes.

This book is bristling with challenges to the rational economist, and provides tempting insights for the salesman and the potential criminal. It is playfully written and although the author has been an eminent academic since the 1950s, it is modern and engaging for the non-technical reader like me.

Kahneman reflects on happiness. His suggestions are fascinating. Two notable points:

Choose your goals carefully so that they are achievable. Kahneman singles out those who aspire to success in the performing arts as particularly prone to disappointment.

Spend time with friends. This, Kahneman asserts, is the key to happiness. Read the book to find out more, then come over for supper to discuss it!

This summer we spent a wonderful week on the Devon coast at East Prawle, a few miles West of Start Point. On our first evening the yachts of the Fastnet Race swept past our window on their outward leg, and on the bookshelf beside the window I found a book I had heard of but never read:
A Voyage For Madmen

Peter Nichols' book follows the nine diverse characters who set out to be first to sail around the world non-stop. The race started in 1968 and Nichols does a great job of exploring the characters of these extraordinary men, and the dynamics of the race that developed, fuelled by the growing interest of the media. It held particular interest to me as I have met two of the survivors of the race, John Ridgway and Robin Knox-Johnson, who eventually won the race.

First to start was John Ridgway, an early celebrity favourite having rowed across the Atlantic two years earlier with Chay Blythe. Like most of the other competitors, Ridgway was sailing in a fundamentally unsuitable craft, the bilge keeled English Rose IV, and after a collision with a press boat as he leaves Ireland he was baling out all the way south through the Atlantic. He pulled out after only 6 weeks at sea.

Ridgway and Blythe (who set sail a week or so later) were both early casualties of the malign influence of sponsors - both were sailing boats provided by manufacturers eager for publicity for inshore cruisers that were not fit for the Southern Ocean. But much greater pressure was to befall the last competitor to set sail, Donald Crowhurst, who beat the race deadline of 31 October by only a few hours. He had gambled his house on winning the competition for the fastest circumnavigation, and set sail in a boat that was entirely unfit for the storms ahead.

Nichol tracks Crowhurst's lonely preparations, departure and, eventually, his decision to cheat in order to save his family. After months at sea and a surreal episode when he goes ashore in South America and has a fine meal with customs officers, Crowhurst's log records his descent into madness. His abandoned craft was found sometime later. He is presumed to have stepped overboard.

Meanwhile, Robin Knox-Johnson, with his radio and self steering gear broken, is relentlessly progressing through the mountainous seas of the Southern Ocean, and eventually returns to a hero's welcome as the only competitor to complete the circumnavigation. In a remarkable act of generosity he gave his winnings to Donald Crowhurst's widow. Psychologists' reports of Knox-Johnson commissioned by his media sponsors before he left described him as "distressingly normal".

Nevertheless, this is an excellent and entertaining study of 9 remarkable men and their endeavours in a bygone age in which it was possible to be without contact with any other human for more than 4 months. I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in the study of determination and adventure.

I worked for John Ridgway in 1990 as an instructor at his adventure school in the highlands of Scotland and so it was a special treat for me to read an account of one of his earlier exploits. I spent a very enjoyable evening with Robin Knox-Johnson more recently at an event where he was presenting on the challenges of raising sponsorship for sporting events. When I mentioned that I had worked for John before becoming a Royal Marine, he collected us some drinks and regaled me with tales of his encounters with Royal Marines in Norway and elsewhere for the rest of the evening.

Wednesday, 24 April 2013

Leadership, especially military leadership, is often characterised as a lonely experience - the loneliness of command. At the point of decision, a leader is alone with his or her responsibility - think of Eisenhower deciding when to launch Operation Overlord in 1944 for example.

But before the time comes for decision, leaders have the opportunity to observe and orientate. The wisdom of crowds can help make this observation and orientation quicker and more accurate. And emerging technology and techniques are making it easier to gather and respond to crowd wisdom.

Estimating distance

I was introduced to the concept of crowdsourcing as a trainee Royal Marine. We were taught that the best way to estimate the distance to a target was to ask everyone with you to make their own estimate, and then to take an average of all the estimates. The result, we were assured, is reliably more accurate than the estimate of any single individual.

Business success depends on the engagement of crowds of people with your business idea. These may include customers, employees and investors. While the entrepreneurial vision is your own, its prospects of success depend on the response of others. Balancing your own enthusiasm with "reality checks" is essential, and there are more and more tools that make it easier to do this.

If you are able to gauge the response to your business before committing large investments of time or capital, you will reduce the risks involved, and you may pick up some valuable insights at the same time.

How to ask the crowd

With the proliferation of social media and special interest forums it is easier than ever to collect crowd insights. You could start by asking your friends on Facebook using the polling feature, or starting a discussion in a relevant LinkedIn group. For a larger crowd you could try visiting forums and posting questions - a technique I found very useful last year when investigating raising capital for This Tribe.

For more formal research there are also plenty of services like Crowdflower. And of course for crowdsourced fundraising (in which you invite a crowd to put their money where their mouths are), there are a growing number of crowdfunding platforms in the UK such as Crowdcube and Seedrs.